We recently had a prospective client from NYC ask about how many messages we generally exchange with a woman before we get her to meet in person.
Our male clients don’t want us building relationships online. They don’t want us chatting on their behalf. Our clients generally just want for us to exchange the least number of emails possible before setting up a date with the matches that they find most interesting.
(Side Note: Besides the pilot testing we’re doing with two women in NYC and LA, we have only handled men’s online dating accounts. Based on the results of the pilot testing so far, we may completely open our services to women soon.)
When the New Yorker asked this question to Max, a virtual dating assistant here, he responded with an estimate of between 5 and 15 emails but acknowledged that he wasn’t exactly sure. After that call, we decided that we’d actually like to have some real statistics ready for the next person that asks this question.
So, we did a quick analysis of the first 100 dates that we arranged for our male clients. We only looked at the dates where we sent the first message and a pre-date phone call was not required. Basically, we didn’t want the numbers to be influenced by date arrangements where she wrote the first email or the client had to make a phone call to the woman prior to the first date.
What did we learn?
On average, we asked her to meet up after 5.14 total emails. This is the two-way exchange stat so, in more simple terms: this means we asked her out after 2.57 emails. We saw that most often it was on the second or third email we sent. We also learned that the client met her after an average of 9.72 total emails.
The range (min and max no.) of emails that were exchanged before we asked her to meet up is 1-7 total emails. This means the fastest we asked for the date was in the first email and the slowest was in the seventh. But don’t stop reading here and run off to ask out every girl you see on Match.com using a one-email approach.
We wouldn’t recommend asking her out in the first message… unless 1) she shows interest first, 2) she seems like the kind of woman that would be comfortable with moving it offline quickly, and 3) you know how to write a killer email that addresses her most likely objections (and you probably don’t). Of the 100 date arrangements that we analyzed, we only proposed meeting in the first email to five women and all five of them had sent a ‘wink’ or a similar expression of interest.
The range of total emails exchanged before the first date was 6-18, which represents the total number of back and forth emails that were exchanged before all the details were worked out about where and when to meet. We also found that the greatest number of emails we sent to her prior to the first date was 10 emails. In 2 cases (of 100), we sent her 10 emails and she sent us 8 prior to the first date.
What does this all mean for you men out there?
If you are exchanging tons of emails before you try to take online dating offline, you are probably wasting time. Even though online dating is helpful in quickly filtering through the masses to find some people that may be worth meeting, it is very difficult to know if there will be any chemistry before you meet in person.
One of the top blunders that men make on online dating sites is building an online relationship. They email back and forth too many times, exchanging too much information and killing the mystery. A big part of what makes you attractive online is the mystery. Remember this: mystery creates intrigue and intrigue creates interest. If you start revealing everything about yourself over an endless stream of emails then you risk losing her interest before you ever get the chance to meet her in person.
We clock hundreds of hours per week on online dating sites (translation: we’re really good at this stuff) so it may take you a couple more emails than it takes us to build the rapport you need to get her to agree to meet you. We are just showing you what it takes us to set up a date and explaining why, as a general rule, less emails → more mystery → more intrigue → more interest → more dates.
As a gal who’s giving online dating a try for the first time ever, I wanted to reinforce the idea of asking for a date early on–these guys who seem to only ever want to email are driving me crazy (and not in a good way) with their endless, “Did you have a good weekend?” and “What do you have planned for the week?” messages. Dude, just ask me out already. If I wanted to spend a bunch of time typing, I’d get myself a penpal.
Thanks for your response Jessica. You are completely right. I’ve spoken to a ton of other women that have complained about the same thing. Over the last 8 weeks or so we’ve been online dating for a couple female clients on an experimental basis since we plan to officially open our doors to women soon and needed to do some testing to see what works and what doesn’t. Obviously, some women are fine with asking the guy out on the date but others are not (like you I presume). One woman that is not is a client of ours. She thinks that she should not be the one to propose getting together so we just have to wait… and wait until the guy pops the question. It’s very frustrating. It’s kind of sad, if you ask me, when a man can’t be man enough to take the lead when he’s sitting behind a computer screen
I’ve actually noticed a pretty intense regional difference in the number of messages it takes to meet. I dated for awhile in San Francisco, and there it was pretty standard to secure a date on the second message exchange (opener > response > close). They’re down to get together ASAP.
Now that I’m in Chicago, the process takes much longer, sometimes as much as 5 message exchanges. A conversation typically develops pretty organically, and once it’s clear that you have quite a bit in common, meeting is imminent.
I attribute this to the difference in culture between the two regions. Chicagoans seem to be more interested in conversation, San Franciscans in experience. San Franciscans also tend to be FAR less skeptical of online dating. You see far fewer mentions this in profiles.
In fact, it doesn’t matter haw many massage you have changed!But you should meet each other as earlier as it is possible,ofcourse if you like each other. But I don’t understand those men who are looking only for sexual contacts! It is awful!!!